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Micheal Holt/Mr. Terrific was chairman of the Justice Society of America I believe during Geoff Johns' run. His intellect is genius level...has Olympic athletic level abilities. He also has the ability to not be detected by modern technology. This of course was all pre New 52.

Finished watching the episode and I absolutely loved it. The animation is indeed going to be something to get used to, but the voice acting and story telling was great. The take on Alfred reminded me of Geoff Johns Earth One Alfred. It was nice seeing Pyg and Toad. Agreed on seeing Bruce dealing with injuries. Katana was also nice to see...and Michael Holt as well. I will be watching this.

If they didn't have a problem replacing Robin with Katana, I wonder why they didn't also replace Alfred with a character more in line with what they needed.

Because they didn't have to. Alfred Pennyworth's military/intelligence background has been an established part of his character in the comics for decades, a source of his skills in disguise, deception, and field medicine which have often been useful to Batman. Many stories in the comics have portrayed Alfred as a skilled fighter who was past his prime but still able to put up a good fight when he needed to. Some other screen incarnations of Alfred have had an intelligence or military background themselves. Batman: TAS explored Alfred's history with British intelligence in its final episode, "The Lion and the Unicorn." Michael Caine's Alfred in the movies was explicitly a military veteran.

True, this version is playing up that side of his character more, but that's just a shift in emphasis, no more revisionist than earlier screen versions that ignored that aspect of the character. And since earlier screen Alfreds haven't developed that side of his character much, I'd say we're overdue for one that does.

Besides, what really defines Alfred isn't his job, it's his relationship with Bruce. "What they needed" for this character was a surrogate father figure and aspiring guardian for Bruce and a skilled assistant for Batman, someone who worries about his safety and is able to confront and challenge him about the risks he takes. There is no possible way that Alfred Pennyworth is not the right character for that.

What do they need from Alfred, though? Someone who has intelligence and insight of their own, who can give advice and provide support to the hero and his mission. How is the new Alfred failing to do that? The main difference is that he's more explicitly a retired intelligence operative.

I don't think it's a "replace Robin" mentality. It's more a showing more characters we've never really seen before. As mentioned before Katana has history with Bruce, as part of the Outsiders, a team he personally handpicked and led. "The Batman" first paired Bruce with Babs and then eventually introduced Robin. It could be the case with "Beware The Batman" as well. It's just too early to tell since it just started.

The design of Alfred seems to have changed as well since the promo pic was released. He for some reason reminds me of Bob Hoskins. This is clearly based on Geoff Johns version from Earth One. He still functions the same...he just has more to bring to the overall picture.

Eh, Alfred was a butler. A gentleman's gentleman. I don't see why they can't just let characters be themselves without turning them into action heroes. It's like having Willy Lumpkin played by Hulk Hogan or Aunt May played by Sybil Danning.

Eh, Alfred was a butler. A gentleman's gentleman. I don't see why they can't just let characters be themselves without turning them into action heroes.

You're not listening. In the comics, Alfred Pennyworth was and is a former British intelligence agent and combat medic who later became an actor and then eventually became the Waynes' butler. This is canon. He's not just a butler, but has many hidden skills that are of invaluable aid to a crimefighter. This has been an established part of the character's history in the comics for at least three decades (as far as I can track down). What we're seeing in this show is arguably less revisionist than what we've seen in earlier shows and films that ignored Alfred's intelligence background.

Eh, Alfred was a butler. A gentleman's gentleman. I don't see why they can't just let characters be themselves without turning them into action heroes. It's like having Willy Lumpkin played by Hulk Hogan or Aunt May played by Sybil Danning.

Really, it's pretty silly to insist that decades-old comic-book characters can only be portrayed one way when they've actually been portrayed many different ways over the decades. The original Alfred in the comics was a fat, buffoonish amateur detective with a working-class accent, and only came to work for Batman and Robin well after they were established as crimefighters, though his father Jarvis (yes, Jarvis) had been Thomas Wayne's butler. When Alfred appeared in the 1943 film serial, he was played by a thin, moustachioed man, and so Alfred's comics appearance was changed to match, with the explanation that he'd slimmed down at a health spa. For a time, he was occasionally known as Alfred Beagle; the name Pennyworth wasn't coined until 1969 (which is why Alan Napier's Alfred in the '60s TV series never had a last name). By that point he'd gone from lower-class to upper-class in his diction and behavior, becoming a more stereotypical English butler. Napier may have had an influence on that. Post-Crisis, he was retconned into having been Bruce's butler since childhood and his surrogate father after the Waynes died -- implicitly making him rather older than he'd been before.

Heck, in the '60s there was even a period where Alfred was apparently dead for several years, then turned out to have survived and become a deranged supervillain called the Outsider. This is a character who's been through a lot of changes.